Risky Writing: Self-Disclosure and Self-Transformation in the Classroom; Jeffrey Berman; Amherst,  University of Mass Press, 2001  312 pp. Cover Price: $21.95; ISBN 1-55849-338-7, (pbk) Changing the Subject in English Class: Discourse and the Constructions of Desire; Marshall W. Alcorn Jr.; Carbondale,  Southern Illinois University Press, 2002,  151 pp. Cover price:$27.00; ISBN 0-8093-2427-X, (pbk)

Transforming Mourning: Psychoanalytic Paradigms for Change in the Writing Classroom

I know that there is such anguish in you that you cannot say a single word.

New knowledge is an acquisition of meaning that facilitates growth, but it also comes with the price of de-acquisition of old knowledge. Change is a process that has its gains and losses. A psychoanalytic approach to writing classrooms is a pedagogy that seeks not only to expedite personal and social transformation for the betterment of the individual and his or her society, but also to examine and evaluate the meanings individuals attach to personal identity and culture. All teachers of writing can gain from an understanding of empathy, a concept not discussed frequently enough in composition theory or literary theory, for that matter. A better understanding of empathy in personal writing classes that encourage self-disclosure of sometimes difficult and painful material can lead to more self-awareness on the teacher's part, and therefore more effective teaching.

Importing psychoanalytic theory into the writing classroom is not only a challenging, but a complex task in light of postmodernist ethics. Since the 1980s, cultural criticism has questioned the veracity of psychoanalytic interpretation, arguing that only historical criticism can investigate the transformative possibilities of a cultural artifact by exposing hidden ideologies or suppressed voices within that cultural and historical moment. However, as Mark Bracher has pointed out, “identifying forms of power in the past does not necessarily tell us anything about how oppression and injustice are operating in the present, and even if it does tell us something about oppression and injustice in the present, that knowledge by itself does not necessarily change things for the better” (Bracher, 1993, p 7). Bracher's existential claim is not in the direction of doing away with historical interpretation; on the contra